Uncle Bill's Paintings

So, these four paintings that you see below were painted by my Uncle Bill, who passed away before Xmas of 2003. He was a very interesting and unique person and I'm so happy that my Aunt Judy gave me these 4 paintings of his...he was very interested in Native American culture and art and a lot of his paintings were based on Edward Curtis photos...these pics don't quite do them justice, but I love them...the Zuni Girl is my favorite, it's very haunting and dramatic.

He also did a charcoal drawing of a Chief Wovoka that used to hang on our living room wall that I love, it was so beautiful...Chief Wovoka was considered by the Paiute Indians (that is the tribe who is from the Las Vegas/ Southern Nevada area, they still have a reservation outside of town) to be a messiah and they believed he would save the land and their people from being destroyed - alas, that's not quite what happened...

The Fancy Dance is part of the Pow-Wow, and Aunt Judy explained to me that Bill wanted this painting to kind of look like a time-lapse photo, to show the frenzy of the dancers and also the energy that they are trying to raise during the powwow.